PROJECT BUTTER FACTORY
Henk Slebos and the A.Q. Khan nuclear network
Frank Slijper
Transnational Institute
in association with Campagne tegen Wapenhandel
ISSN 1871-3408
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Amsterdam, September 2007
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Frank Slijper works at the Dutch Campaign against Arms Trade (Campagne tegen
Wapenhandel) and has been a researcher and campaigner on arms trade issues for
the past fifteen years. He graduated in 1993 as an economist (international economic
relations), specialising in Dutch military procurement and the offset policies
implemented to enhance the defence industry. He has written and published
extensively on Dutch arms exports and policy ever since. His recent publications
include The Emerging EU Military-Industrial Complex (TNI, 2005), the co-authored
European Export Credit Agencies and the financing of arms trade (ENAAT, 2007);
and the co-authored A.Q. Khan, Urenco and the proliferation of nuclear weapons
technology (Greenpeace, 2004). For more on the Dutch Campaign Against Arms
FOREWORD
Zia Mian
In late May 1998, the mountains in Balochistan, Pakistan’s remote and desolate
western province, shook and turned white from the force of a nuclear explosion.
It was Pakistan’s first nuclear test, the culmination of a nearly three decade
long effort to match neighbouring India as a nuclear armed state.
India, Pakistan’s neighbour, had tested its weapons a few weeks earlier; its
first test had been twenty four years earlier. In both countries, the
scientists that built the bomb were lauded as heroes. None more so than Abdul
Qadeer Khan, dubbed by many as the “father of the Pakistani bomb”. He was
already a national figure. For over a decade, he had been in the public eye,
seen on television and in the press receiving the highest national honours
and shaking hands with successive Presidents and Prime Ministers.
One Prime Minister of Pakistan wrote about him as “a national hero” who had
given “a sense of pride to our nation”.